Ingredient in Male Sweat Raises Women’s Hormone LevelsActing as a pheromone many in other animals, a steroid from male sweat caused the elevation of a hormone tied to stress and mood in women

Rats, moths and butterflies are all known to send chemosignals to secure mates. Similar phenomena have been suggested but not proved in humans: Studies such as Elizabeth McClintock’s work in the early 1970s

Signature

“If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.”

A mystery chemical that young women deploy as a sex attractant pheromone seems to work for post-menopausal women too.

Joan Friebely of Harvard University, US, and Susan Rako, a private physician in Newton, Massachusetts, US, have studied 44 post-menopausal women. Half added Athena Pheromone 10:13, originally isolated from a woman’s armpit sweat, to their perfume while half added a dummy compound. Neither the women nor the researchers knew who was in each group until the results were in.

In diaries kept by the women for six weeks, 41% of pheromone users reported more petting, kissing and affection with partners compared with 14% receiving the placebo. Overall, 68% of pheromone users reported increases in at least one of four “intimate socio-sexual behaviours” such as formal dates and sex, as against 41% on the placebo.

But the pheromone’s discoverer, biologist Winnifred Cutler, is keeping its identity secret until patents have been granted to Cutler’s Athena Institute for Women’s Wellness Research in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, US. “It’s still a mystery substance being applied to individuals at unknown concentrations,” says George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Friebely and Rako say they have no financial interest in the product.

Journal reference: The Journal of Sex Research

Signature

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. - John Lennon You can twist perceptions, reality won’t budge. - Rush